Chicagoans march for gay rights: 'This is our war'

As the sun came up Sunday somewhere in Pennsylvania, 20-year-old gay rights activist Megan Tucker stood before a busload of groggy Chicagoans and announced disappointing news.

One of the four buses with Tucker's group making the 14-hour trip to the National Equality March in Washington, D.C., had broken down near Toledo, Ohio, and had to turn back.

"This is our war. We have lost a quarter of our comrades," Tucker said. Several of the key organizers were on that bus, along with most of the posters and signs they'd made for the march.

Tucker said the group would have to fight extra hard to make up for the loss. "We're going to give them hell," she said.

Later Sunday afternoon, with their numbers down to 160 from 212, the members of the Chicago contingent of Join the Impact, a grass-roots gay rights activist group, hollered into bullhorns under a 16-foot banner as they marched through downtown Washington with others to demand equal rights for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people.

"We're here. We're queer. We're fabulous, don't [bleep] with us," the Chicagoans chanted as they marched 2.3 miles to the Capitol for the rally.

Chicagoans who made the journey to Washington said they hoped the march would show solidarity behind the LGBT community's push for equal rights.

"It's like the [1960s] Freedom Rides [for racial equality]," said Bella Mia, 20, a Columbia College student who said she marched to support her gay friends. "I think gay rights are the great civil rights cause of the here and now."

Rick Garcia, public policy director with LGBT advocacy group Equality Illinois, said he's been to every national gay rights march since the first in 1979, and felt this year's had the clearest goal: to demand equal rights.

Garcia, who flew to Washington, said he was disappointed that the march wasn't on more people's radars, and questioned the effectiveness of chanting to empty buildings on a Sunday over Columbus Day weekend.

But he expected the march would give a "boost" to LGBT activists and energize a new generation of leaders to get to work when they get home.

In Chicago, meanwhile, hundreds of gay rights activists and supporters braved the cold weather and Chicago Marathon's crowds for a Daley Plaza rally.

"I want equal rights. I am out. I am a proud lesbian," said Meg Miller, 43, of Chicago's Lincoln Square neighborhood. "And I wanted to gather with other folks here because I can't be in D.C."

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